Lost Causes
by Uilleand
Summary: Written as a kiriban for Tankgirly on DeviantArt, who requested a story about her dark and deadly Seviole. A determined assassin and a doomed Jedi meet on Korriban one last time. Rated T for language and violence. Concrit greatly appreciated!


_Night stalked the empty halls of Korriban.  
Deep, velvety dark slipped between the shadows. Black on black. Death in death.  
The silence was good.  
Only silence allowed the screams to be heard…_

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The problem with the Sith, really, was their complete lack of subtlety. Jedi Master Lonna Vash hadn't expected any to be hanging around here. Who'd have thought they'd be too stupid to clear out?

_They're not the ones in a cage, are they, Vash? Think you're so clever, do you? Hide in the Krayt dragon's lair – they'll never look here…_

Not a flicker of the Jedi's disgust and self-condemnation played across her serene features. Indeed, she appeared at peace with the galaxy as she sat, cross-legged, in the tiny, filthy cell. It might have been more difficult to maintain her composure – except she was fully aware that it was pissing off her captor to no end.

That helped.

It didn't reduce the stink of the place though. An unidentifiable corpse rotted very close to her. She acknowledged it and spared a moment to wish the long-gone soul some peace, but then forced her mind back to the important task – getting the hell out of here.

Imprisoned she may be, but Lonna Vash wasn't a fool. Only the very worst of luck had led this low-level Sith and his friend across her path in the moments immediately after she had dispatched an enormous tuk'ata. She had been depleted.

_Make no excuses, Vash. You were careless, and you cannot afford to be careless. Do not do so again._

Mindful of her 'company,' she smoothed her forehead before the vertical lines of annoyance could appear.

Eyes closed in meditation; she still watched the hulking brute who had been as surprised as she at their encounter. She almost felt sorry for him – his type would never rise beyond the ranks of cannon fodder – but he bristled with arrogance and raw energy. He had been left behind on guard duty while his obviously brighter compatriot went to report their find. She didn't have much time.

Opening her eyes, her gaze settled on her captor. Pure malevolence rolled off him in waves, aggravated by his inability to shake her calm mien. No. This was not someone who could be redeemed in the short amount of time she had. _Too broken. _

She had learned, finally, to recognize lost causes. _Too late to recognize the one who should never have been lost._

Impatient with her own regret, Lonna kept her face impassive for the Sith. He had started to pace about five minutes ago.

Perfect.

"They won't wait for you, you know." Her voice sounded like his mother's, she knew, harsh, judgemental – blaming. "You're sitting here like boil on a hutt's ass, while Shiro will be sucking up to the mistress, making sure his place is at her side while you're sent to some Tatooine dive to rot."

He spun, his face twisted in a snarl. "Shut your mouth, bitch, or I'll break your neck."

She added just a touch of contempt to his mother's voice. Her face was still smooth, giving nothing away. "Oh, that would be clever, you giant k'lor'slug. Why don't you prove just how useless you can be? Powerful enough to kill a caged Jedi, but too stupid to realize the value of what you've captured."

Her laugh was laced with a lifetime of ridicule. "No wonder you'll never amount to anything. I'll bet you're dead before you ever see real battle."

His fist caught the side of her head, hurting only slightly more than the durasteel bars as her skull rebounded off the other side of the cage. His face swam in her watery vision as he crouched beside her, leering through the bars.

"I don't have to kill you, Jedi. I can _hurt_ you, and no-one's going to object to that."

"You … you wouldn't dare." Just enough fear, a hint of a quaver through her pride, to spur him on.

She barely suppressed a smile as he reached for the cage door, already lost in the sound of screams she had not yet released. So she was not prepared when the light blossomed from his eyes.

When he opened his mouth in a high, hopeless wail, the dull, red gleam poured free with the sound.

To Lonna's confused eyes, it seemed as if the hulking figure of a Sith shrank and became delicate in the red glow. She shook her head to refocus her eyes, red sparks swimming in her vision. The huge Sith's body had slumped to the floor, at the feet of a the slight, cloaked figure. The long, red beam of the figure's staff _snicked _closed, retracting from the skull of the unfortunate man.

"Well now, _I_ might object."

As the figure's head rose, the Jedi Master met the cold, golden eyes that gleamed beneath. And Lonna Vash felt a brand new sensation tingle down her spine – absolute terror.

"_Seviole_…"

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Time exploded inside Lonna Vash's head. Fragments of memory clung to fragments of skull, piercing her brain, ravaging her eyes.

_A lovely, ethereal child with calm eyes and porcelain skin, black hair that fell about her face in waves of curl. A child who constantly returned with injured birds, wanting only to fix gossamer wings. A child with a heart that ached too easily, loved too easily. _

A child whose adoring eyes followed the path of the dark-haired Republic soldier with the easy grin as he marched off to face the Mandalorians.

"It will destroy her!"

"It's the only thing that can save her! There is war coming, Kavar! She will be broken by it, if we cannot make her strong! She thinks she is in love with him, for Force sake! It must end!"

"Why are we always talking about ending love, Lonna? Why must it end?"

"You must be joking. Because it's dangerous, Kavar! Because it's the most difficult thing for a young heart to deny. Because it leads to choices that directly contradict the very purpose of the Jedi – peace, stability, dependability!"

"Do you really believe that seeing the truth of him will end her love?"

"If it does not, then she was never ours in the first place." 

The pressure increased on her skull. She could feel her teeth begin to crumble against each other as her jaw clenched. She writhed in her filthy little cell, her mind grasping for an anchor, anything to hold on to… Her jaw cracked. The pain sent her reeling into unconsciousness. But there was no escape, even in oblivion.

_"I can redeem him!" _

"Perhaps you can, child, but it is not your task."

"I am not a child!"

"Your mission is search and rescue. You may observe, but you are to avoid contact. Your priority is getting the prisoners out. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Master Vash." 

"Lo-onna…Wake up, Lonna. It's time to wake up and face the consequences, my dear Master Vash."

Her jaw was a bloody mess of broken teeth and shredded tongue, but Seviole easily read the panic in her eyes. It made her smile through cracked lips.

"I found him, Master." She giggled. "But surely you guessed that, didn't you?"

"It's OK, Lonna. I knew I couldn't come back anyway – disobeying orders and such. There's no place with you for someone who loves."

Her fist felt like stone as a backhanded swipe crushed cheek and nose.

"How about _hate_, Lonna?? How do you feel about that? How do you feel about anything, Lonna?"

The small figure stood stock still in the dusty Korriban room. Even her breathing seemed to slow, then cease.

"There is a problem, however. I seem to have lost him. Bad of me, I know. I should be more careful with my things." She smiled grimly at her own jest.

"Tell me, Lonna … you don't happen to know anything about an exile, do you?"

The jedi's eyes widened and then turned inward. That just would not do.

Seviole stroked the Lonna's bruised and bloody forehead, her pale fingers tracing a jagged crack in the bone that she had placed there herself. The simple gesture sent the older woman crashing to the floor, twisting in the cooling pools of her own blood. The smallest twitch of the dark assassin's hands, and the crack widened under the downward pressure.

"Pay _attention_, Lonna! Don't force me to repeat myself, do you understand?"

She took the gurgling whimper for accession.

"You have no idea how upset about this I am, Master Vash. Some jedi harlot has taken my soldier from me … has _redeemed_ him, if rumours are to be believed. That _slut_ has made him forget his vows."

Tears pooled in Lonna's eyes and trailed pink rivers through the red landscape of her face. There was something in those eyes that set Seviole on edge, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She found the sensation … annoying.

"I won't believe that you don't know where they are, you know. I know you know. And I will have it from your mind, even if I have to pull apart every single neuron to find it … _especially_ if I have to pull apart every single neuron. I would so appreciate it if you made this difficult."

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In the end, it was very difficult.

Because Lonna Vash simply did not know where the exile had gone.

And Seviole refused to believe.

There was a great deal of pain, actually. But the outcome was inevitable, and that helped.

The dark haired assassin became more and more enraged as she tore through Lonna Vash's mind, finding nothing. Worse, at each turn, she would encounter barriers that she could not understand, could not break down, could not cross. Pale before, Seviole's skin was a ghastly shade of blue-grey as she panted through clenched teeth.

"What are you doing, you _bitch_?" Her voice skirled up and out of control. "You cannot keep me out of there forever! You cannot hope to stop me!"

She battered the walls inside the jedi's mind unmercifully, calling upon all the brute force of her rage and pain and howled to the universe as she was denied again and again. There was something on the other side of those walls. Something important! She would not be denied!

Exhausted, Seviole clung limply to the bars of the jedi's cage, seething over her prisoner's limp form. One of Lonna's mangled hands twitched pitifully, then reached out and brushed against the assassin's ankle in a strange, bloody caress.

And the Jedi Master reached through those impenetrable barriers of the assassin's own making, carrying a touch of sunshine and fresh sea air, a brightness and longing … and … and … compassion

_Oh, Seviole. Oh, my child. _

"SHUT UP!!!"

Her staff flashed red before she could even form the thought and came crashing down on the ruined Jedi Master.

_Oh, my child. I am so very sorry._

And the light drifted away on the currents of stale Korriban air.


End file.
